Ashley Benson

For 21-year-old Ashley Benson, playing the role of Hanna Marin in teen drama, Pretty Little Liars, is a true fantasy. For a start, though her character is a member of the most popular clique in Pretty Little Liars’ Rosewood High, she never even went to high school. “I’ve never been to a prom or a dance” the actress laments. “So it’s funny because we have dances on the show and I’ll be like ‘Oh yay! It’s my school dance!’” she laughs.
But then Rosewood is far from your normal high school. Since queen bee Alison DiLaurentis (played by Sasha Pieterse in flashbacks) turned up dead at the beginning of season one, Hanna and friends have been stalked by a mysterious character, known only as “A”, who threatens to unveil each of their darkest secrets. The circumstances surrounding Alison’s death are still unresolved (the show is now in it’s second season) but Benson is certain Alison is no more. Well, almost.
“She’s dead,” she says confidently before pausing to think, “but there could very much be a possibility that she is alive,” she continues, followed by a further pause. “We have no idea what is going on!” she finally confesses, revealing that the cast are just as in the dark as the audience about the show’s central mystery. The only thing that she is certain of is that school really isn’t for her: “I can’t sit still for long because I have so much energy, my attention goes elsewhere.” Fortunately, then, early modelling, commercials and bit parts lead to a long-term role for Benson in legendary soap opera Days Of Our Lives when she was 13, and a teen-hood of home schooling. Upon realising acting was all she wanted to do, she decided to pursue showbiz full-time at junior high age, and hasn’t looked back. “I was always a performer. Always singing and dancing,” she recalls of her childhood, “I would memorise every line from a movie and then watch them with my family and be saying all the lines and they would be like ‘Ashley! Stop! We’re trying to watch!’ But I loved it. Growing up I wanted to be like Hilary Duff and be on a show. She was a main inspiration. And now I’m on a TV show,” she beams, proving that it is possible to achieve those childhood dreams. And best of all? In a case of fantasy and reality overlapping, Benson’s character in Pretty Little Liars has evolved to be more like her, making it even easier for her to relate. “At first she was really stuffy and kind of bitchy,” she says of her character, “but a lot of my personality has gone into her so she’s really funny and sarcastic and more down to earth. It’s fun to play her.”

[Originally published in Wonderland Magazine Issue 28, November 2011. Photography Danielle Levitt]

Drew Roy

“Any scene in which you see anybody sweating is for real,” explains 25-year-old Drew Roy, whose latest claim to fame is his role in the sci-fi series Falling Skies, produced by Steven Spielberg. The show follows a group of humans fighting for survival after an alien invasion, and Roy (who plays Hal Mason, a fearless scout for the human resistance) is keen to make the scenes in which he is physically exhausted as realistic as possible. “We were shooting in Toronto in the summer and it was ridiculously hot and we were all dressed like it was fall. So we had three layers on, a jacket, and were running for our lives. Noah [Wyle, who plays his on-screen father Tom] laughs at me because I do a couple of laps before I jump into a scene to get me out of breath. I love the physical aspect of it.”
Although the sweat and exhaustion of the alien invasion show are real, the killer robots and demonic extra terrestrials thankfully are not. “It’s CGI,” Roy assures, “so mostly it’s me hiding down behind a burnt-out car looking at a guy holding a long metal rod with a spear on top and I have to look really terrified.”
Having moved from his home in Alabama to find a faster life in Atlanta, Roy came into acting apparently on a whim after taking some out-of-the-blue advice from an LA-based talent manager to give Hollywood a try. Fate, seemingly, is on his side: in the seven years since his arrival in Los Angeles, Roy has already worked with Miley Cyrus, in the astronomically successful Hannah Montana (playing Miley’s on-screen boyfriend, Jesse), and has done a great job of chatting up Spielberg himself, on the set of Falling Skies. “It was a surreal experience,” he says of the moment the director came over to strike up conversation, “we talked about this and that and the dirt bike I ride on the show. And then he wanted to talk about Miley because he’d just got into the show – I think with one of his grandchildren – and he’s fascinated by how high pitched little girls can scream when she walks on a stage.”
Would Roy ever want to experience such a level of fame himself?
“Heck no!” he replies, “You can’t make enough money to buy your life back, in my opinion. I look at those Twilight guys and think, ‘I would not want that’. You don’t have your life anymore. I admire the guys who constantly work and if you saw them on the street you might not know their name but you admire their work – that’s what I’d like to do.” If his success so far is any indication, anonymity might not be something Roy can hold on to for too long but he is ready to take whatever the future holds. “I’d say I’m in a good place right now. I get recognised on the streets but it’s like a compliment. I got a long way to go before it becomes a nuisance.”

[Originally published in Wonderland Magazine Issue 28, November 2011. Photography Danielle Levitt]

Tyler Posey

“I was screaming a lot yesterday so I might not have the most amazing interview voice,” says a rather husky sounding Tyler Posey, lead star of MTV’s surprise hit show, Teen Wolf. Having taken the 80s film classic and reinvented it as a weekly platform for today’s Twi-hard viewing public, the show surpassed expectations when it debuted earlier this year. In fact it was so popular that a second season was commissioned before the first had even wrapped. However, it is not howling at the moon that has over exerted the 20-year-old actors lungs but the thrill ride of rollercoasters at the Universal Studios amusement park. “I was bored and went with a couple of friends and had a lot of fun,” he explains, “the first thing we did when we got there was go into a pretty scary haunted house which takes 20 minutes to walk through. At the very end we got separated from one of our friends and got freaked out because we didn’t know where he was,” he continues, sounding panicked by the memory. But surely it must take a lot to startle a young man working on a supernatural show like Teen Wolf? “It’s all lies!” he laughs. “I am scared of everything. There were werewolves inside the maze and I thought I could have something in common with them but they still tried to eat me.”
Having survived the ordeal, Posey is finding ways of keeping busy during the show’s summer hiatus before the filming of season two begins in the latter half of November. Whilst a real life werewolf might struggle to cope with spontaneously emerging fur, Posey has recently opted to experiment with his own body hair by growing his first ever mustache. “I’ve been able to grow one ever since I was a young teenager but this time I tried to grow one for real,” he explains. However, the end result was not as dashing as he might have anticipated, with online commenters swiftly noting his resemblance to Mandy Patinkin’s Inigo Montoya in Rob Reiner’s 1987 classic, The Princess Bride. “It looked really bad,” he concedes with a laugh, “but I was very proud of it.”
Having begun acting at a young age, one of Posey’s earliest roles was Jennifer Lopez’s son in the 2001 romantic comedy, Maid in Manhattan. Like the famous Latina, Posey is also trying to find a balance between the world of acting and the world of music, with his as-yet-unsigned band, Lost In Kostko. “We played this show on Sunday night and it was like being Justin Bieber or something,” he recounts excitedly, “the curtain went up and there were screaming girls and flashes of cameras and posters saying my name – it was surreal. The part I loved the most was that they were singing our lyrics back to us and that was the first time that’s ever happened. I can’t even describe to you how that feels.” But all those Teen Wolf fans worried he might be about to cancel his acting plans, need fear not. Lost In Kostko is only a side project, for now. “It’s a punk rock band so I don’t really need to know how to sing. I can definitely act, but the singing: I’m still working on.”

[Originally published in Wonderland Magazine Issue 28, November 2011. Photography Danielle Levitt.]

Steven R McQueen

It was in 1897 that Bram Stoker created the most legendary figure in vampire lore: Count Dracula. Ever since, undead bloodsuckers have cropped up with ferocious regularity in pop culture but these days it seems like they’re particularly at home on our TV screens, with current prime time hits ranging from sexy, salacious HBO thriller True Blood through to the more PG-13 smash, The Vampire Diaries.
“I think there has always been some sort of appeal in vampires because they would be the one predator above us on the food chain,” theorises 23-year-old Steven R. McQueen, grandson of iconic film star, Steve McQueen, “I think before, they were monsters to be feared, but now they are more relatable to a teenager’s life style. Except they eat people.”
In the first two seasons of the show, McQueen’s character, Jeremy Gilbert, found himself on a dark path involving hard drugs, following the deaths of people he cared about, only to die at the end of season two. Luckily he was resurrected in time for season three, with a side effect of his second chance at life being the ability to see dead people. Supernatural elements aside, does McQueen have any similarities to his own character?
“I hope not,” he laughs, “Jeremy’s been through more stuff than anybody should do, and of course when you portray someone, you try to connect certain things with yourself but it’s tough because he’s a bit darker than most.” However, McQueen finds his vocation a great way to channel his creative needs, “We’re playing make-believe at the end of the day and I do believe that our greatest tool is our imagination. In a sense, the work is therapeutic as I can go through things day to day and I find it to be a great outlet.” First experiencing acting in third grade, McQueen didn’t tackle acting full time until the mid-noughties, when he began to appear in shows such as CSI: Miami and Without A Trace, before landing the role of Jeremy in 2009. (He also had a leading role in last year’s blockbuster B-movie, Piranha 3D). Despite being in a show that involves “vampires, werewolves, Frankenstein – you name it!” McQueen’s own curiosities are much more down to earth (he would rather lose himself in history than fiction). However, he does have a childhood fantasy he still likes to indulge. “I read lots of comics growing up,” he says. “A lot of Marvel and DC. Batman, though, is my favourite because he doesn’t have any super powers.” Much like his on-screen persona, a human character that has real problems to deal with. Could Jeremy be an extension of The Dark Knight himself? “I guess so,” he supposes. “I won’t disagree with you.”
Having admitted that he doesn’t have a compelling interest in fictional beings, can McQueen tackle another fantasy: who would be his dream date? “Scarlett Johansson,” he says, quick as a flash. And what would they do? “Whatever she wants,” he grins.

[Originally published in Wonderland Magazine Issue 28, November 2011. Photography Danielle Levitt]